Pay YouTube for Search Placement
For a small fee that you set, YouTube will now feature (or “sponsor”) your videos in YouTube search results. Google owns YouTube, so this type of advertising, similar to AdWords, makes a lot of sense (no pun intended). In fact, YouTube is using the established AdWords infrastructure to power this new feature.
YouTube Sponsored videos appear at the top of the search results for any keywords you choose. This can be quite powerful if targeted correctly.
My hosting company gave me a $50 gift certificate to AdWords when I purchased my last domain. They assume new webmasters will use it to advertise their latest ecommerce shop. I used my $50 gift certificate to take YouTube Sponsored Videos for a test drive.
Signing up is easy, and took me less than ten minutes. First you create an AdWords account, if you don’t already have one. Then you select the video, or series of videos, that you want included in the advertising campaign. Set some keywords, and even the amount you’re willing to spend per day, and you’re set.
Now, when users search out the keywords you entered, your video will appear in the highlighted Sponsored Videos section. Using this new advertising feature in conjunction with YouTube’s Insight stat reporting can be very powerful. If you see that the majority of people who search the term “Doctor Who” click through to your video, advertising for that keyword phrase will only skyrocket your exposure to that targeted audience.
And, the best part of the campaign is, you only pay when someone clicks on your video. In one hour, 1,800 people saw my thumbnail and username, leading to additional brand recognition. Three people clicked on the video, so it only cost me 30 cents for YouTube to show my channel and video thumbnail to 1,800 people.
7 Responses to “Pay YouTube for Search Placement”
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Viral Video Wannabe...
…is written by Alan “fallofautumndistro” Lastufka, co-author of the book, “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide
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Meta
November 14th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
November 14th, 2008 at 7:07 am
LOL Nigahiga’s video showed up in your “Content verification” box?
man that thing has issues
November 14th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Doesnt this largely benefit partners, a partner pays to advertise, and the advertising brings in revenue so you can get a nice ROI on it? I am gonna have to give it a drive as well, i saw it a few days ago but really had to look it over to see if it will work? thanks great article i was hoping some one else discussed it
November 14th, 2008 at 8:02 am
in the end the numbers will speak.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:33 am
From your tweet i thought you meant the frontpage. Thank god it’s not.
Looks good. And 455 unread? :O Somebody’s been slacking.
Andrew.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Wow this is really cool! I read about this on YouTube’s blog but you actually explained it better than they did xD $0.10 per click isn’t too bad. If I had more money, I would give it a go. So with your $50 you have enough for 500 clicks? Nice.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I think the part that is going to irk some people is that it was site redesigns that in part made it much more difficult for people to be found. So they will see it as YouTube made it tougher on purpose, and now they want you to pay for this.
I would like to see YT explain this better, if I am paying for something don’t make me learn it as I go, but we all know YT has had and still has communication issues. I think the tool can be beneficial to some, i’m just not sure their intended audience of “people looking to get discovered” is the right group to go after.